Embers under Ice.
Haaron didn't need a name to dominate. In Cold Ember Pavilion, he wore no title, bore no crest, and offered no explanation for the quiet gravity that followed him through the halls. They only knew him as "Mu Shen"—a name borrowed from a long-dead wanderer whose bones Haaron had once used to bait a frost-scaled demon snake. The name was useful now. Plain. Deceptive. Because there was nothing plain about the man walking their corridors. His qi coiled tightly beneath his skin, veiled but ever-present. He walked slowly, always as if watching—not aimless, but measuring the land. Each step a quiet stake in territory that didn't yet know it was being claimed. The Pavilion elders had kept him tucked away, isolated in the Northern Peak reserved for visitors and outer sect guests. But isolation meant space. And space meant opportunity. Haaron's first move wasn't to dominate. It was to observe. He spent the next seven days in silence—watching disciples train in slow, outdated techniques, analyzing poorly inscribed formation plates, and listening to junior alchemists stumble over low-tier furnace manuals. He didn't interrupt. Didn't mock. He simply watched. He memorized their schedules. Their habits. Their mistakes. He studied their beast pens—overfed spirit foxes with no bite, malnourished frost lions bred to be pretty and nothing else. He saw waste. He saw softness. He saw potential. Then he acted.
On the eighth day, Haaron walked into the alchemy courtyard and asked to borrow a rusted, three-legged cauldron. The attending disciple laughed—until Haaron lit no fire, spoke no chant, and yet brewed a pill that shimmered with violet-gold heat, the scent so rich and sharp it made three passing disciples faint from spiritual overload. The laughter stopped. Rumors began. The next day, Haaron tamed a half-mad frost lion with a single touch and spoke five words to a snow mantis hive that made them obey him like bound pets. On the third, he refined a low-tier poison pill that paralyzed a full Core Formation elder mid-lecture for six hours—and cured him with a single kiss to the forehead. After that, the sect couldn't pretend he was just a guest. They watched him now. Whispered. Followed. Some with awe. Some with fear. Some with arousal. All with curiosity.
The Sutra pulsed stronger every day. It wasn't even activated—just dormant, passively scanning for emotional resonance. Every time a female disciple looked at him too long, her spiritual aura shifted. A flicker of longing. A tremor of submission. Even those who didn't understand what they felt found themselves blushing when he walked past. Haaron didn't need to seduce them. He needed only to exist. And their hearts did the rest.
That evening, as the cold moon bled over the mountaintops, Haaron stood shirtless at the edge of the Pavilion's western cliff, watching the forest shift. Beside him, Mei Lin lounged lazily on a thick branch, fangs glinting between crimson lips as she licked an experimental toxin off her finger. "You're ruining them," she said, amused. "You haven't even fucked anyone new yet, and they're already praying to your shadow." Haaron didn't answer. He watched the snow. "You like it," Mei whispered, sliding behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. "Their curiosity. Their fear. Even Saintess Yue watches you every day from that high tower and pretends she doesn't burn every time you take your shirt off." "She'll come down," Haaron murmured. "Eventually." "And when she does?" Mei Lin's voice darkened. "Will you break her?" Haaron turned. "I'll show her what it means to melt." Mei grinned.
The next morning, Haaron requested three things from the Cold Ember Pavilion: unrestricted access to the beast pens, full use of the abandoned furnace halls, and silence. No one denied him. They didn't dare. Yue Shilan said nothing in public. But in her private chambers, she screamed into her pillow after a meditation session that was supposed to clear her thoughts and only made her think of his hands. She had watched his qi spread through her sect like roots under snow. Had watched her disciples bloom like moonlotus flowers under his influence—glowing, trembling, opened. And she couldn't stop thinking about the way he touched Lian Rou in battle, or how Mei Lin gripped his hair when she kissed him in the middle of a ruined courtyard. She told herself she was above it. But her thighs said otherwise. And the Sutra's pull was getting stronger.
Three days later, Haaron made his next move. He gathered three disciples from different branches of the Pavilion—one alchemist, one beast tamer, one poison cultivator. He taught them nothing at first. Just watched. Then he corrected them. Gently. A wrist angled here. A breath slowed there. The moment they obeyed, their qi reacted to his. He smiled. And the Sutra pulsed. By the end of the session, two had cried. One had begged for another lesson. All three meditated with his name in their hearts that night.
By week's end, ten more had followed.
He hadn't seduced anyone.
But their spirits were opening.
And when the Sutra opened its next phase, he would be ready.
Back at Snow Petal Hall, Yue Shilan summoned her most trusted junior to her side. "Report," she commanded. The girl swallowed. "The guest… Mu Shen… he's now instructing outer disciples unofficially. He speaks little, but his presence is drawing qi naturally. The spiritual balance of Cold Ember has shifted." "And the elders?" "They fear him. But they fear your silence more." "And the girls?" The junior hesitated. "Three confessed they had dreams about him. One said she felt her spiritual sea shift after holding his gaze for longer than ten seconds." Yue turned to the window. "He hasn't touched them?" "No." "But they're already his." The girl didn't answer. She didn't need to.
That night, Haaron sat in his courtyard surrounded by pill jars, beast eggs, and a map drawn in blood showing the leyline beneath Cold Ember's mountain. His fingers glowed with Sutra light, tracing circles across a beast's skull as he prepared a ritual not seen since the Three Realms collapsed. A minor sect was supposed to be a safe haven. A resting place. But Cold Ember Pavilion was beginning to hum. It didn't know it yet. But it was becoming something else. A furnace. A forge. A kingdom. Haaron smiled.
He didn't just devour enemies.
He planted roots.
And once they bloomed, nothing would be untouched.